Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and the spotlight-chasing candidates of 2012

By George F. Will
Sunday, March 6, 2011

If pessimism is not creeping on little cat's feet into Republicans' thinking about their 2012 presidential prospects, that is another reason for pessimism. This is because it indicates they do not understand that sensible Americans, who pay scant attention to presidential politics at this point in the electoral cycle, must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness emanating from people associated with the party.

The most recent vibrator is Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who won the 2008 Republican caucuses in Iowa and reached that year's national convention with more delegates than Mitt Romney, and who might run again. Huckabee, now a Fox News host, was asked by Steve Malzberg, a talk radio host, this:

"Don't you think it's fair also to ask [Barack Obama] . . . how come we don't have a health record, we don't have a college record, we don't have a birth cer - why, Mr. Obama, did you spend millions of dollars in courts all over this country to defend against having to present a birth certificate. It's one thing to say, I've - you've seen it, goodbye. But why go to court and send lawyers to defend against having to show it? Don't you think we deserve to know more about this man?"

Huckabee should have replied, "I've seen paranoia, goodbye." Instead, he said:

"I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya. . . ."

Huckabee thereupon careened off into the (he thinks) related subject of Obama having sent back to the British Embassy in Washington a bust of Winston Churchill that Obama's predecessor had displayed in the Oval Office: ". . . a great insult to the British. But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists."

The architects and administrators of the British Empire were imperialists? Perish the thought. A contemporary of William Jennings Bryan once said of the three-time Democratic presidential nominee, "One could drive a prairie schooner through any part of his argument and never scrape against a fact." But an absence of facts means there is no argument.

A spokesman for Huckabee dutifully lied, saying his employer "simply misspoke": "The governor meant to say the president grew up in Indonesia." Obama did not really grow up there - he spent just five of his first 18 years there and the other 13 years in Hawaii. But obviously Huckabee, with his dilation on the Mau Maus, was deliberately referring to Kenya. Unless Huckabee thinks the Mau Maus were Indonesians, which he might count as another "one thing that I do know."

Republicans should understand that when self-described conservatives such as Malzberg voice question-rants like the one above and Republicans do not recoil from them, the conservative party is indirectly injured. As it is directly when Newt Gingrich, who seems to be theatrically tiptoeing toward a presidential candidacy, speculates about Obama having a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" mentality.

A magazine article containing what Gingrich calls a "stunning insight" is "the most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama." Gingrich begins with a faux question: "What if he is so outside our comprehension" that he can be understood "only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior?" Then Gingrich says this is not just a question, it is "the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."

To the notion that Obama has a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview, the sensible response is: If only. Obama's natural habitat is as American as the nearest faculty club; he is a distillation of America's academic mentality; he is as American as the other professor-president, Woodrow Wilson. A question for former history professor Gingrich: Why implicate Kenya?

Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon - Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

So the Republican winnowing process is far advanced. But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons.

<span style="color: #990000">Seems more and more Republican Journalists, particularly the ones who garner some respect, are warning Repigs of their irrational bravado, lies and vitroil.

And several states, trying to get enough signatures to recall their Repiglican Governors, Jan Brewer among them, and the closet guy with the funny eyes, in WI.

And, Glen Beck, leaking sponsors like a sieve, while Alaskans express their disapproval of Palin, in huge numbers....and Rove is out there warning Repigs, as well, to stop lining up with the nutjobs!

I think there was no mandate for destroying the Midle Class.

Looks like Repiglicans, misjudged, AGAIN!

G.</span>
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pooltchr

03-07-2011, 10:58 AM

I do agree that neither Newt nor Huckabee are strong enough to challenge for the White House in 2012.
The right needs nothing more than a strong leader who is willing to make the decisions that can turn the economy around and put Americans back to work.
They ain't it!

Steve

Sev

03-07-2011, 11:04 AM

More babble.

Soflasnapper

03-07-2011, 11:09 AM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: pooltchr</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I do agree that neither Newt nor Huckabee are strong enough to challenge for the White House in 2012.
The right needs nothing more than a strong leader who is willing to make the decisions that can turn the economy around and put Americans back to work.
They ain't it!

Steve </div></div>

Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday mentioned that by this time in the last presidential cycle, there were 8 fully declared GOP candidates in the field, compared to today's total of 0.

Williams said this is because the otherwise likely candidates for the GOP have decided Obama is a likely winner for re-election, and is too strong to be beaten (so they may all take a pass).

General scoffing around the panel at that one, but it is a curiousity.

There was also the prediction that Newt would be the first to get into the race, and also the first to drop out.

pooltchr

03-07-2011, 11:15 AM

Given the overwhelming support of the media for Obama, I think timing for a strong candidate is critical. We know that the left fears strong conservative candidates, and will immediately go into full vicious attack mode against anyone who emerges as a challenger to Obama.
(Note that the 2 republican candidates have already been attacked right here by the pit bull from Md.)
It will be interesting to watch as the attacks build against every potential Rep candidate, while Obama will continue to have their full support as he drives down the path of destruction.

Steve

Gayle in MD

03-07-2011, 12:04 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Soflasnapper</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: pooltchr</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I do agree that neither Newt nor Huckabee are strong enough to challenge for the White House in 2012.
The right needs nothing more than a strong leader who is willing to make the decisions that can turn the economy around and put Americans back to work.
They ain't it!

Steve </div></div>

Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday mentioned that by this time in the last presidential cycle, there were 8 fully declared GOP candidates in the field, compared to today's total of 0.

Williams said this is because the otherwise likely candidates for the GOP have decided Obama is a likely winner for re-election, and is too strong to be beaten (so they may all take a pass).

General scoffing around the panel at that one, but it is a curiousity.

There was also the prediction that Newt would be the first to get into the race, and also the first to drop out. </div></div>

It is a well accepted fact among Republican pundits that Newt ONLY says he is running, then he turns the act of finding out if he should run, into a family enterprise, for money, LOL.

Even the far RW Scarbasher's entire table of RW Obamabashers, on "MOURNING" JOE, lol....laughed their butts off the morning Newt announced his PAC, to 'Test' the waters, lol.

While Huckabee, OTOH, is building a mansion in Florida, from his own Sara like, exploitation of the dummies, his grand preacher like love of money, and his exceptionalism, in being almost as good an opportunist as Palin....both of them still out there slinging Bs and slander, as only a really True Christian can do!
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G.

G.

pooltchr

03-07-2011, 01:04 PM

Pretty early in the campaign for you to be going into full attack mode, isn't it?
Better save some of that hate for the ones who wait a while to announce. It would be a shame to waste it all on someone who won't even be a serious contender.

Steve

LWW

03-07-2011, 04:59 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: pooltchr</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Pretty early in the campaign for you to be going into full attack mode, isn't it?